"ACORN could be
eligible for as much as $10 billion in federal funds and that's simply
unacceptable! We need no more evidence that the organization is either
unable or unwilling to live up to the ethical standards that the
American people demand."

– According to attorney and US Rep. Michele Bachmann

Here is a bulletin, Rep. Bachmann. You can edit videotape. You can delete material that doesn't support your story. And when the editor is also the shooter and star of the show who happens to have an agenda, there's a wee possibility that the video is not an accurate representation of how the ACORN entrapment mission played out.

Dan Rather and CBS were disgraced over — though not necessarily wrong about — George W. Bush's National Guard Service because they didn't adequately vet some records used in their investigation. Of course, they couldn't, because originals had disappeared.

The ACORN videos don't remotely approach that standard of reporting. The crack journalists on the ACORN expose — a
25-year-old MBA student and the daughter of a right-wing radio personality — had far less supervision, a
demonstrable bias and an expressed desire to bring down the organization. Yet their work is treated as conclusive evidence of corruption calling for immediate action by Congress.

Don't like the CBS/Bush comparison?

How about Blackwater?

Surely you remember the immediate action Congress took on an amendment to shut down funding for Blackwater after five Blackwater
guards were charged with killing 14 Iraqi civilians. Don't 14 real dead
people count as much for evidence as a dozen pretend illegal
immigrants?

Well, no. The ethically impaired but well-connected Blackwater, now calling itself Xe, is still working for the State
Department.

Still no good?

Let's consider UBS, the Swiss-owned bank that has agreed to disclose information about the accounts of 4,450 wealthy American taxpayers — about 10% of its American clients. UBS didn't just provide some sketchy advice to a couple doofuses about their requirement to file tax returns. It actually solicited "wealth management" clients through its U.S. affiliates and helped them hide income to evade income taxes.

Its deal allows UBS to remain a "Qualified Intermediary,"
favorable treatment for a foreign bank in return for complying with certain reporting
standards — the standards UBS violated. Congressional action against corrupt banks? I'll have to get back to you.

But for ACORN, an organization that serves low-income people, Rep. Bachmann and Congress have a different standard of evidence. All you need is surreptitious video starring Superflea and Bambi, and the howling jury represented by Strib commenters is ready to convict.

Nazi Party, SS, KGB, KKK, and now, ACORN.

For years, they've gotten away with murder.

If one isn't sickened and outraged over a group that was attempting to
bring age 12-14 girls into this country for prostitition with our tax
dollars, we have a very serious problem in this country. Acorn not only
needs to be shut down, but there should be some long prison sentences
for those involved.

Via Twin Cities Streets for People: Mark Rosenberg, executive director of The Task Force for Global Health, writes about "roads that are designed to kill." Three years ago he found a gravely injured woman lying in an Atlanta street and wrote about the experience.

In response:

Half blamed the runner, saying she should not have been running in the street at that hour. Half blamed the driver, for not paying close enough attention. Not a single writer blamed the road.

I took a photograph of the scene where I had found the runner. When I showed this picture to friends from Sweden they asked, “This is where you live? This is your neighborhood? Your streets are designed to kill people.’’

Rosenberg mentions several design changes to roads in other countries that significantly reduced traffic deaths:

Sweden replaced red lights with traffic circles or rotaries, and death rates at these intersections fell by 80 - 90 percent.

The death rate on Swedish roads fell by 70 - 80 percent when Mylar, supported by closely spaced plastic poles and used as a median barrier, effectively prevented head-on collisions.

Ghana put in rumble strips
across all the roads leading into the capital city of Accra, reducing
fatalities by 35 percent.

Laws mandating seat belt use and prohibiting dangerous acts like driving while texting or drunk still leave compliance up to the driver. Those approaches may be cheaper to implement than road design interventions, but also appear to be less effective.

I guess it takes a "socialist" country to figure out what "accidents" are predictable and preventable — and then do something about it.

We hear again and again that government doesn't create real jobs. Never mind that for every tax dollar put in circulation by government — through employment, purchasing, grants, construction contracts, etc. — it all ends up back in private pockets again.

We've heard the argument that government is just diverting the dollars away from the already productive and higher uses to which they would be put. But even the originalists agree government should be in the business of putting bad guys in prison.

However, imprisoning everyone who steps on cracks in the sidewalk isn't necessarily a great use of tax dollars, so states that have high corrections spending are starting to look for ways to reduce that budget item.

California is facing up to how its draconian crime laws are helping bankrupt the state. On a smaller scale in Colorado, Gov. Bill Ritter has decided to save $19 million for the state budget through early releases of prison inmates who were within six months of getting out anyway.

Some critics fear reducing the prison population will put criminals back on the street and raise crime rates. Others warn that sending them back into a bad job market increases chances they will fall back on old habits. But there is also concern from the state's privately run prisons [emphasis mine] that too few criminals will be bad for the shareholders.

Colorado's prison system is a mixture of state-run and privately run
facilities. The private prisons make a profit largely based on
efficiency, and they need full beds to get fully paid.

The largest of those companies working in Colorado, Corrections
Corporation of America, is already fretting that reducing the prison
population too far would be bad for the company's bottom line.

"We're hoping it doesn't put us in a position where our operations are not viable," said Steve Owen, spokesman for Tennessee-based CCA, which runs Crowley County Correctional Facility, Bent County Correctional Facility and Kit Carson Correctional Facility.

Somewhat related note, Form + Content Gallery has put together a show, called "Unbundling the Housing Crisis," that in part looks at the relationships between crime, private profit and housing. Here's a review of the show, which runs noon-6pm Thursday-Saturdays through September 5.

"Ghosts and Shadows" is a 1:60 scale model of a 26-block-wide swath across North Minneapolis that depicts 270 of the more than 1,000
homes currently designated as vacant, boarded and
condemned.

Behind the large model play barely audible recordings of people who have lost their homes calling Families Moving Forward seeking help finding shelter. Their voices and matter-of-fact descriptions belie the stress and uncertainty of their situations.

I never got around to interviewing Sgt. Bill Blake. The Minneapolis police officer was on a short list of names I was accumulating for a potential series of profiles on people who were spending their time on earth "making a life" and not simply making a living.

Now, it's too late. Blake, 45, died Saturday, from complications related to heart disease. He was living with an external heart pump and hoping to get a transplant.

His obituary tells much of his story — about how his daughter's accidental shooting death led him to start a conference and information network to better coordinate law enforcement efforts in the Native American community. Sovereignty of tribes and the movement of members between Minneapolis and reservations in the region complicated the sharing of crime data.

But Blake wasn't just a data cruncher. The obit neglected the story of Blake foiling an armed robbery at Legends Bar two years ago, where he and his cousin were having lunch. The masked robbers burst in and ordered patrons to "give it up." Blake shot the gun out of one robber's hand and both fled, leaving behind gun fragments, blood and teeth that helped tie them to the crime.

Blake was also busy helping educate care givers about the portable heart device he was using and hoping to be able to get back to police work. Instead of giving in to adversity, he rolled it up in a ball and pushed it forward until it stuck to something better.

A man in the door installation business was talking to me about his past woes as a small landlord. He and his brother had picked up some rental properties in the course of their work and tried to branch out. They got a lot of work from people ready to unload houses and condos.

The laws are stacked to protect tenants from bad landlords, he said. Professional property managers have the procedures down for screening out and evicting bad tenants. They tell me they never rent to someone with an arrest record, he said.

An arrest record, not even a conviction.

It's tough finding good tenants, he said. One house he owned had been rented by a jeweler who stripped the house of chandeliers and cabinet hardware before he left. His latest job was replacing a front door smashed in by a SWAT team coming after someone who was flopping in a rental house.

For part-timers like him, the experience had been nothing but headaches, and he couldn't do that level of due diligence, so he got out of the business.

I have sympathy for the landlord who was stuck with the mess and expense. This "cost of doing business" can be written off, but it never covers the aggravation factor. It's a not unreasonable response to blacklist anyone with an arrest record

But what's the broader effect, particularly in a market where low-income and marginally employed people may be losing their places to live?

It's hard for me to ignore the fact that a white child is extremely rare in the shelter where I volunteer.

As far back as 1994, St. Paul and Minneapolis ranked first and second for having the highest racial
disparity in arrest rates among the nation's cities with populations
over 250,000. At the time of the report, Minneapolis had a black arrest
rate 24 times that of the white arrest rate.

The disparity may be better now, but my point here isn't exclusively about race. It's about whether an already bad housing-law enforcement-employment connection is just going to get worse.

What do you do when you can't find a place to live, are out of work and have little social safety net remaining?

You find a place where you can crash. It could be with family, but that may not be an option if relatives are struggling, too. Maybe you sleep in the car. Shelters are beyond capacity. Living rough outside doesn't suit many for long, and certainly not with kids. Eventually, you may find that drug users and other unsavory types are the only ones with room on the couch or on the rug.

You try looking for work. Maybe you can take calls on a cell phone that lets you buy service by the minute, but what address do you put on the application?

One of your room mates has another proposition that isn't legal, but it has a higher prospect of putting some money in your pocket.

What the hell, you already can't rent a place under your own name.

There are plenty of people in bad situations who have made a string of bad choices. They focus on the raw deals they've gotten instead of what they need to do to change their lives. I get all that. It's why I've chosen to help their kids instead; I don't have to be making judgments about who's redeemable and whose downward spiral is beyond my ability to affect.

Every 3-year-old is redeemable. We must believe that.

But we can't do it all in preschool. And we can't do much at all if once their dad is arrested, the path toward the shelter gets so much steeper.

Today's news has story about the crew of downtown ambassadors who patrol the Minneapolis business district, giving out directions, watching for trouble and mostly just engaging people. It featured Kaynan Abdirahman, who was assigned Nicollet Mall.

"Most of the panhandlers are pretty knowledgeable. They know their
rights," Kaynan said. "If you treat people with respect, anyone will
listen."

Since they wear neon green shirts, I'm certain that wasn't a downtown ambassador patrol I saw today on the Mall. These guys were on bikes and wearing blue.

The two police officers were accosting cyclists riding down the Mall. Bicycle traffic is prohibited there between 6am and 6pm, but because the Mall is car free — and because the nearby north-south bike lanes on Marquette and Second are closed for construction — cyclists will take it.

I usually avoid the street because of the bus traffic and often unwary pedestrians, but today I wanted to see the recycled metal sculpture exhibit that's part of the Aquatennial. The display was at the IDS between Seventh and Eighth on the Mall.

Leaving the exhibit, I stopped to take a shot of the bike parking near the corner and then stuck my foot on a pedal, gave a kick and crossed Eighth toward Ninth, a one way pointing home.

At that point, I became a lawbreaker. No, I didn't ride on the street. But instead of walking my bike down the block, I kept my foot on the pedal and propelled myself scooter-style on the broad sidewalk.

Although engaging in sarcasm is my trade, I know better than to practice it with a police officer. I don't have a problem with their enforcing the law. I'd even be open to a little correction that my one-foot-on-the-ground-both-hands-on-the-brakes-two-mile-per-hour propulsion is indeed considered riding on the sidewalk. My bad, officer.

But please, let someone deliver it who likes the job, who is delighted to be on a bike on a beautiful day, who believes they are looking out for the safety of cyclists and pedestrians — and who doesn't assume that because I'm on a bike, I'm an arrogant asshole.

I don't need to be treated specially, officer. I'd settle for being treated the way Kaynan Abdirahman deals with a panhandler.

Tomorrow, I'll look for the Mall bike cops and ask to hear their side of it.

UPDATE: Due to unforeseen events, I will have to postpone hearing the cops' side of it.

A Minneapolis cyclist cited Thursday for indecent exposure told officers he was training for a naked bicycle race on the west coast. He was reported riding near Lake Calhoun at around 6 am. When
arrested, he was wearing a "skirt-like garment or a pair of shorts with
the crotch area removed."

Berkeley and San Francisco have already had their World Naked Bike Ride outings for 2009. Denver just had its naked bike ride last Saturday, featuring about 20 riders. As you can see from the linked slide show, these events usually aren't races or even particularly racy. [Photo: Denver WNBR]

That seems to leave Seattle as the likely site, assuming the culprit was planning on a sanctioned WBNR event. By the way, there are no WNBRs slated for the Twin Cities, forcing local riders to train in solitude.

The Strib story doesn't clear up the alibi, nor does it answer any of the questions cyclists care about:

What kind of bike was he riding?

Who makes the best seat for naked riding? (WNBR says don't worry about it.)

What kind of training is required?

I have some ideas of the answer to number 3, but they would be based entirely on hearsay and speculation.

[Attorney General Lori] Swanson said that credit card companies, banks, retail lenders and cell
phone companies increasingly place mandatory arbitration clauses in the
fine print of their consumer agreements. [Note: So do securities dealers.] The consumer agrees -- often
without realizing it -- to have any dispute resolved by an arbitrator
chosen by the credit card company or another creditor, waiving the
right to have it heard in a court of law.

In bringing together consumers and creditors to settle credit-card debts, the company purports to be independent, but the AG's office says National Arbitration Forum has hidden its ties to
debt-collection law firms.

In a separate lawsuit, the city of San Francisco said the company arbitrators ruled in favor of
consumers in just 30 of 18,075 credit-card cases over a four-year period.

That's the way it works all over. Poor and debt-strapped people pay higher interest rates and are nicked constantly by fees and charges, while I earn miles and get a free float each month. We both deserve what we get, right?

And if you think that's not fair, just ask my friends here.

When I heard about the suit yesterday, two conservative political affiliations immediately came to mind. One was Minnesota First Lady Mary Pawlenty, who, to her credit, quit after a month, declaring the job not to be a good fit.

The other, which was not reported, was between Edward C. Anderson, managing director and chief executive officer of the National Arbitration Forum, and Mitch Pearlstein's Center of the American Experiment. Anderson sits on the conservative think tank's Board of Directors.

One of the parties in a road rage shooting incident two years ago has pleaded guilty to reckless discharge of a firearm within a municipality.

I read a lot about the case at the time and wrote several posts about the confrontation that occurred between the shooter, Martin Treptow, a security guard with a concealed carry permit, and Landen Beard, an undercover police officer.

But I never came across this bit of information about the sequence of events reported in today's Strib story.

Beard admitted passing illegally on the shoulder in a line of
traffic on Woodcrest Drive heading south toward 99th Avenue, causing
Treptow to get upset and follow Beard. Treptow said Beard was driving
erratically and yelling at Treptow and his wife. Treptow honked, and
the feud continued, culminating as the two vehicles were stopped behind
other cars at a traffic light.

Beard said he pulled his gun and identified himself as an officer
after seeing Treptow brandish one. Treptow, who had a handgun permit,
said he fired after Beard pointed his gun toward Treptow and his wife,
who was in the front passenger seat. The couple's children were in the
back.

The cop in an unmarked car drives past on the shoulder of a suburban boulevard, and a guy with his family in the car takes it on himself to chastise the driver. A chase ensues and guns are drawn. This looks to me like Treptow put himself and his family in danger.

I'll be interested to see what Joel Rosenberg, who takes this case very seriously, has to say about this account.

*****

This is not beat up on stupid people with guns week, but here's a case from Oklahoma City that seems a bit clearer because there is video.

Two masked teens burst into a pharmacy. One has a gun, the other appears to have sack for loot. A man behind the counter shoots the unarmed robber first, then chases the fleeing second robber.

Then, he comes back in the store, gets another weapon from behind the counter and shoots the unconscious kid five times in the abdomen, killing him.